


Echoes

by seaofolives



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Everybody Lives, Everyone Is Alive, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2019-04-30 18:03:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14502540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seaofolives/pseuds/seaofolives
Summary: In another life, life goes on. Major spoilers forAvengers: Infinity War.





	Echoes

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Hygge](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12879174) by [seaofolives](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seaofolives/pseuds/seaofolives). 



> bc this is a good coping mechanism

It felt like a thunderclap. 

And he felt like a child, jumping at the boom of a thunderstorm. If his mother had still been alive, she would have laughed at him. The world was at peace, of course; dark and quiet as all—or most, when his brother was behaving—nights had been ever since they had made it to Earth. 

He felt no consolation. It was as if he’d escaped from one dream only to find himself in another—an infinite loop. He realized he was covered in sweat when he ran his hands up his face and his hair, already and finally growing into a more respectable length although it still had a ways to go. He caught his breathing. When the shadows became too much, he jumped out of his bed and marched to his windows to pull the curtains open, look down into the city. It was still there. 

And there—when he stumbled to the living room to look for it there: muted lights, speeding ones, one side stopping to make way for another. The city as he knew it lived and breathed on. No demise, no darkness. No bodies, no destruction. 

His sigh came out in a great exhalation, misting the glass when he knocked his head against it. It was pleasantly cool against his skin, a comforting touch for his waning nausea. The stillness settled him; he felt like he’d been thrown and juggled around a wild orbit by a ruined piece of spacecraft. From a distant world, a pair of footsteps shuffled. He closed his eye but he only saw the dreadful footfalls of Death, walking amongst the dead. His dead. 

“Thor?” 

He opened his eye and turned; there was a dim light at the edge of his vision, just beyond the pool of shadows. 

Loki looked on from behind the wall, a book next to his knee where he held it between the pages. 

“Brother, you look terrible,” he said. 

Thor’s head weighed like the river beneath the Bifrost when he lifted it from the window. “I had a dream,” he confessed, half-stumbling towards his sibling dressed in his emerald Asgardian nightgown. 

“What kind of dream would put the Mighty Thor all out of sorts?” 

“Why are you up so late?” Thor asked, raising a finger to him. 

Loki raised his book. “Library fees,” he answered. He stepped aside to let his brother through the kitchen door. “Your robe is sliding across the floor.”

Thor barely glanced at it before he left it in an empty chair; he hadn’t even noticed he’d taken it with him when he’d escaped his room in nothing but a pair of board shorts. Pulling another chair back, he deposited his entire weight, and that of the universe upon it, carrying his head in his hands. 

Loki reclaimed his spot at the narrow end of the dining table, flanked by two towers of books, one taller than the other. He also had an Asgardian lamp decorating one side of him, the kind that adjusted itself with the sun, as well as a pyramid of bottles to the other. That reminded Thor of how thirsty he was. “What sort of dream was it?” he asked again in his clear voice. 

Thor took a moment to ponder the question.He remembered the dream, of course—every last piece of it, but he did not enjoy being the bearer of this knowledge. The visions still felt as warm as his fingertips after a lightning strike. Dreams were not supposed to be so real, and yet this one was. He rose suddenly, pushing his seat back with an ugly noise. “A dream,” he began finally, his voice as heavy as his entire weight, “of death, and destruction.” He could feel Loki’s eyes on him as he dragged himself to the wine rack, a new purchase of theirs, and pulled a bottle at random. He wished he could dull his senses, even just a little. Rub down the clarity, like a man denying the truth. He popped the bottle open with his fingers, drank a mouthful then returned to the table. 

The entire time, Loki said nothing. He only watched him from his place, taking a bookmark to slip between his book, setting it aside. 

Thor wasted some more time inspecting the sticker on his wide-bottomed bottle, twirling it carefully in his hands. “I dreamt that a terrible ship intercepted us on the way to Earth,” he finally continued. “I dreamt that the Mad Titan Thanos came…and massacred half of our people.”

“Why would he do that?” Loki asked. 

“He was looking for the Tesseract,” Thor said, looking up to face his brother. “And you gave it to him.”

Loki exhaled. “That’s what dreams do.”

“Did you take the Tesseract from the vault?” 

“I didn’t.”

“No lies?”

Loki shook his head. “No lies,” he said, his voice even. In spite of that, they both knew that Thor wouldn’t trust his word if his life depended on it. 

Still, he could find nothing to say to that. He hadn’t come out there to attack his brother on something as baseless as a wild imagination. He went back to his bottle. “I followed him to Earth,” he went on, “but by then, he’s already collected all the Infinity Stones. I tried to kill him but…” He shook his head. “I didn’t do it right.”

“Didn’t do it right?” Loki repeated. 

“Should have gone for the head,” Thor mumbled, and it was as if he could hear the Mad Titan himself saying it in his mind, feel every muscle of his quaking under the spell of rage, of numb fatigue. “That’s what he said,” he added. “I went for his heart.”

“Did I die?” 

Thor saw his feet dangling and kicking off the floor, while he watched helplessly on from where he was bound and caged, believing and disbelieving. It had been dark then, but the stars that surrounded them showed him everything he didn’t want to see. 

“Were there no survivors?” Loki persisted, calling to him. 

“Half of our people lived,” Thor said, facing his brother, and Loki understood. He saw the flicker in his eyes. He saw him stiffen his lips, his jaw as he fell back carefully to his seat, nursing the blow. Loki was a man who knew how to speak and read between the lines. The non-answer Thor gave him echoed as loudly as the truth. 

“He snapped his fingers, and half of the universe suddenly disappears. I don’t know,” Thor sighed, running his hands down his face. “It all just felt too real. I have had dreams before, of Ragnarok and the stones and Father.” He dropped his fists carefully on the table, just next to his bottle. “But this one is different. As if I was living an entirely different life.”

“Was it a warning, then?” Loki offered. “Did it come from the Norns?” 

“If it came from the Norns, then it came too late,” Thor said, wrapping his fingers around his bottle. “And I’ve never known the Norns to pay a late visit.”

“You don’t know the Norns, Thor,” Loki reminded him, looking at him evenly. “You don’t know their ways. They have magic beyond our imaginations, they speak of things beyond our knowledge. Of universes, different lives…” He shook his head. “The fates of gods and men alike.”

“So you think this is a timely warning,” Thor said, the thought alone chilling him. If it was, though, he didn’t know if it was meant for him… 

“Tell me about the multiverse theorem,” he asked all of a sudden, just as Loki was about to return to his book. 

“You mean the one from when we were kids?” Loki replied. “Come on, Thor, you already know that—”

“I don’t care, I still want to hear it!” Thor surprised even himself with the boom of his voice. 

Loki eyed him in surprise, but obedient to his command, he put down his book again, and entwined his fingers on the edge of the table as he began to think. “The multiverse theorem,” he said after a while, “tells us that for every decision made or not made, an exponential number of possibilities arises, leading off to yet even more exponential numbers of possibilities.” He spread out his hands, “And all these unseen futures and presents,” and he pressed them to his chest, “live in parallel among us. I could sweep my arm out like this,” he did so with his right, watching its careful track, “and that’s 3 million universes I’ve touched with my fingertips.”

Three million. Thor wondered if his dream was one of them. Or if it was like a star from a different galaxy, clustered in several other universes he would never know. That could have been him, he realized suddenly, cold water running down his spine. That could have been him and his brother on that ship. 

“Maybe it was the Norns, Thor,” Loki went on, reminding him of his presence in the room. “Only the Norns could have you shaken like that,” he said with a gesture. “What will you do about it, then?” he asked after a pause. 

“Well, what else am I supposed to do?” Thor smiled at his brother. “I’m gonna make sure that doesn’t happen. I dreamt of Ragnarok and saved our people from it,” Thor grunted as he got up to his feet. “So that’s what I’m going to do. Because that’s—” He pointed at Loki.

“—what heroes do, yes, goodnight, brother.” Suddenly disinterested, Loki went back to his book. 

That was how they had always been, both of them. Perhaps he ought to consider himself lucky that he and his brother lived in a cluster of universes light-years away from his dream. Thor rolled his eyes at his brother’s genuine support and started out. By then, the shadows had already shifted, and a blue light had dressed their living room, as it would when the sun was rising. 

He went back to the kitchen just then. “You know, I really am glad that you’re here, Loki,” he said to his brother. 

Loki looked up to him then, and smiled, which made Thor smile, too. He wondered suddenly which of his decisions it was he had made and not made that had led them to this homey kitchen in the middle of a modern city. An intricate formula that would never be repeatable anymore. What a delicate fortune the Norns had given them. “I’m still here,” Loki promised him. Then waved him off, eyes falling to his pages. 

Thor stuck out his middle finger to him, but went away chuckling at his usual nonchalance. Perhaps he could want for a better brother, someone sweeter from a different universe. 

But he wouldn’t trade this one for the universe.


End file.
